Washington Post watching online pay experiments

December 6, 2010

A Washington Post (C) vending machine is stocked with newspapers for sale. The Washington Post is monitoring efforts by The New York Times and other newspapers to charge readers online but has no plans to do the same for now, the Post Co. chairman said Monday.

The Washington Post is monitoring efforts by The New York Times and other newspapers to charge readers online but has no plans to do the same for now, the Post Co. chairman said Monday.

"On pay models, obviously what The New York Times is doing is of interest to us," Donald Graham told financial analysts at the UBS 38th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference here.

"We'll be watching it and we wish them well," Graham said, adding that his newspaper was also monitoring pay wall efforts by Rupert Murdoch's The Times.

Acknowledging that the Post would not be a pioneer in fee-based services, Graham said the company would be watching how others implement those approaches.

"There are experiments galore going on in pay models at newspapers all around the country," he added.

"We're quite willing to be followers on this front."

News Corp.'s The Times and The Sunday Times recently began charging readers for full access to their websites and The New York Times has announced plans to begin charging next year for full online access to NYTimes.com.

Graham also said the Post Co. is "investing a little bit in technologies for news delivery generally and we may have something new and interesting to announce before too many months go by."

Like other US newspapers, the Post has been grappling with declining print advertising revenue, eroding circulation and the migration of readers to free news on the Web.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said Tuesday that Google and Microsoft's access to his newspapers could be limited to a "headline or a sentence or two" once he erects a pay wall around his titles' websites.

On the theory that a driver who knows when a red light will turn green is more relaxed and aware, vehicle manufacturer Audi is unveiling this week in Las Vegas a technology that enables vehicles to "read" traffic signals ...

There you are, cruising down the freeway, listening to some tunes and enjoying the view as your autonomous car zips and swerves through traffic. Then the fun ends and it becomes time take over the wheel. How smooth is that ...

1 comment

The Washington Post and the NY Times, as well as the major free TV "news"casts, and other old line "news" media won't be gaining new revenue sources any time soon. They've been hemorrhaging readers/viewers for a decade now because this center-right nation has finally woken up and now understands that they are nothing more than shills for the Democratic left. Expect the decline to continue, online fees or no.

And Nov 2 put an axe in any plans to have the federal government bail them out.

Bye, bye, fishwrap.

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